When We Touched The Sky

It was summer 1977 and people were fighting in the streets of Britain. An openly fascist party, the National Front, began to win press interest and high votes. It gained a foothold on the terraces and on working-class estates. How was it, people asked, that racism and fascism were being allowed to march again?

The National Front won over 100,000 votes in London alone. Its supporters marched through Haringey in North London, and were stopped only by a mixed crowd of black and white Londoners, throwing shoes, bricks and flour.

At Lewisham, that August, fighting between left and right saw 200 people arrested and 50 policemen injured. The Sun, the Mail and the Daily Express argued against immigrants, urging the state to take action against the dangerous extremists who opposed the National Front.

But as the papers began to take sides, so did many others. Together with other anti-racist and anti-fascist organizations, the Anti-Nazi League mobilized up to half a million people, painting out graffiti, handing out leaflets, persuading people to vote against the right. It was one of the biggest mass movements that Britain has ever seen.

Told through interviews with local activists, this book is the history of that campaign.